


In The Middle of The Night, I Hold On To You Tight

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [20]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, First Time, Flirting, Gen, Idiots in Love, Love, Naked Cuddling, Pining, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Tenderness, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, smitten idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24962281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: “We need to stop this,” he mumbles, pulling back from her lips to brush an apologetic kiss on her cheek. His whole body is achingnotto stop, and he can feel how turned on she is, as well, but if they don't end this here, they'll never get out of this bunk by the end of the day, and they have a pending deadline to deliver this bounty.“Okay,” sighs Cara, dragging her lips along his collarbone. Din hisses and his eyes shut under a flare of pleasure when her tongue flickers around his pulse.“Cara,”he warns – or, rather,pleads.She chuckles under her breath and finally the grip of her arms around him relents enough for him to pull back, and suddenly facing a mad mudhorn doesn't sound that much of an effort compared to the one he has so make pulls himself up from the irresistible cradle of Cara's body.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune, Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709416
Comments: 26
Kudos: 117





	In The Middle of The Night, I Hold On To You Tight

**Author's Note:**

> I'd sworn to myself I'd finish Perfect Paradise before writing anything else but Ms Gina Carano decided to break the internet via IG, today, and (after crying over [_that_](https://beautiful-thensad-thensadder.tumblr.com/post/622187514762051584) picture for a little while) I felt the urge to write this.
> 
> Warning: the helmet comes off, here. I just pretended, for once, the Mandalorians of Din's tribe are like any other Mando out there and can take their buckets off whenever they like. I need this, Din needs this, we all need this. 
> 
> The title is once again from a Garbage song, Tell Me Where It Hurts.

He awakens slowly to an unknown languor permeating his body, deep into his muscles, his joints. Gradually, his conscience crawls out of his drowsy mind and stretches outward to his limbs, finding them sore, but quite pleasantly so.

He tries to stretch, but with this attempt comes the surfacing awareness of not being alone. He acknowledges the warmth, first; it's a feeling he perceives with every single inch of himself, something that seems to burn on his skin, a touch of lips on his neck, a hand on his chest. His fingers twitch and underneath them warm, soft flesh welcomes the experimental press of his fingertips.

There is a dry sheen of sweat all over him. The tip of his tongue traces his lips as she stirs, finding something else, there, a sweet taste he recognises but cannot quite place just yet. It still makes his mouth go dry and a shiver runs down his spine.

A slight movement above him ignites an electric spark at the pit of his stomach. He stills.

His body is starting to remember – this softness, the salty taste lingering on his tongue, the frantic breaths, the whispers, the cries muffled into kisses in the darkness of the room...

A choked groan gets stuck low in his throat at the sudden spike in his heartbeat.

_Cara._

There is very little left of the darkness of the night when he lets his eyes flutter open. The morning light is pale and cold, bringing in a taste of the winter covering the land outside. Din looks down and his heart skips a beat – oh, so blissfully – when he sees Cara's beautiful face resting upon his chest with a peaceful expression, her dark lashes casting long shadows on her flushed cheeks. It takes him several seconds to break out of the amazed spell this breath-taking picture put on him. Little by little, he starts noticing other things, like her palm spread over his breastbone and the brush of her lips over his pectoral, how her leg is curled over his, her hips pressing against his side and the damp heat of her folds brushing dangerously against him.

He feels paralysed, so it must be a higher will driving his hand up to move a few locks from her cheek; when he tries to retract his hand, he finds himself pushing it further, instead, burying his digits into the thickness of her hair, and the casual brush turns into a caress – tentative, at first, and then more and more intent as it ventures forward, around her head, to the back of her neck. His thumb traces over her ear and down below her jaw, meeting the tender flesh just above her pulse.

He smiles.

It's unfair of her to look so breath-taking even in this state of unconsciousness. To this day, he still doesn't know how he hasn't lost his reason, yet, living every day with a woman like this constantly testing his virtue.

Until last night, he had believed she would always be just that, a temptation out of his league, only there to make him ashamed of his own weakness. And then came the job on this frozen hell of a planet which drove them back to the ship covered in snow and iced to the bone, barely still standing on adrenaline and mere stubbornness, and when their clothes were gone and they were still shivering and giggling like a couple of idiots who had just risked their lives for a handful of credits, all that was left was an insane hunger for freedom and recklessness that led them exactly where they are now, no longer cold and shivering, but warm and spent and happily so.

“We don't have to,” she whispered as she kissed his neck, his shoulder, pressing herself so desperately against him that all he could do was hold her tight and kiss her back – everywhere, touching her wherever his hands could get – and his reply was only a half smothered moan into her mouth when he finally found the lucidity to say, “I want to.”

It didn't have to mean anything, they told each other before getting lost in a tide of lust and repressed feelings that, Din muses, wasn't meant to be repressed for much longer, anyway. There is only so much endeavor two human beings can put in keeping themselves away from each other emotionally while remaining so painfully close physically. It was only a matter of time before they gave in to the inescapable force drawing them together, and now that they finally did, Din doesn't really know where they'll go from here. To him, this was never a realistic possibility: he never went beyond imagining the physical part of this; the emotional part, the emotion and the love he felt from Cara as she rocked herself into his thrusts, spilling his name into his ears in faint, frantic whispers, was not something he could have ever hoped for, even in his wildest fantasies.

And yet.

His smile widens as he glances down at her once again, bursting with fondness and a sense of adoration that embraces all of her and deeper, a worship of body and spirit alike, and this, he guesses, is what makes it so hard to believe – to have all of her, every inch and every scar, the sweetness of her lips and the painful tenderness of her kisses... all his, all for him.

All of a sudden, the truth is harder to accept than any fantasy: Cara is lying in his bunk, in his arms, looking like a forbidden dream – too beautiful, too good to be real – and he doesn't know what he did to deserve this, but he'll be damned if he lets his insecurities ruin a single shard of this.

Cara stirs lazily in her sleep, her cheek rubbing contentedly over his chest; he has to bite his lip to stifle a moan when she presses her breasts into his side. His arm wraps more firmly around her shoulders, the inevitable arousal mixing with a growing sense of wholeness he has ever experienced before, as if the universe around him suddenly makes sense, suddenly has a meaning.

Cara lets out a soft hum as she nuzzles her face into his neck, the hand she's resting on his chest slipping down around his waist. She smiles.

Din can't seem to remember how to breathe.

He absently wonders, with a strange pang in his heart, how someone can simultaneously look so erotic and so innocent, so tempting and so pure. It's the combination of both these sides of her, he reasons, tugging so mercilessly at strings of his soul he didn't know could be reached, let alone be moved.

It's the slow flutter of her eyelashes across his skin that lets him know she's starting to come to, and it almost disappoints him: he could have stayed here for hours, just watching her sleep, just happy to know she's here with him, safe and comfortable.

“Hey,” he mutters. His fingers curl under her chin as she looks up, a groggy smile stretching her lips as she meets his eyes.

“Hey,” she greets back, voice husky and thick with sleep. There is no trace of regrets or second thoughts in the way she looks at him – and could it be really true, all of this? Is she really looking at him like he's something beautiful and precious? The same way _he_ looks at _her?_

Din struggles to find something to say. Everything buzzing in his mind sounds stupid, if he imagines saying it out loud. He opens his mouth, lost in the dazzling black of her eyes, and she waits for him to speak, grinning indulgently at his speechlessness when it becomes clear he can't even remember his own name.

She finds a reasonable compromise, reaching up to drop a kiss over his beard. It's so spontaneous and domestic is breaks a crack through Din's haze and, finally, a broad grin spreads across his face, infecting Cara.

“Hey,” he says again, oozing awe, and doesn't even care if it makes him look foolish. He's feeling a fool to the bone, right now, scrutinising her with this pathetic smitten simper and a warm throb in his chest, right where her palm is resting.

His thumb touches her chin and, as if reading his mind, Cara tips her head back to meet his lips into a hesitant kiss that is so light and emotional that it feels more like a shared smile.

He loves how soft she feels – all of her – and how well she fits around him. There is no shame between them for their imperfections, for the marks their bodies bear and the ones hidden beneath their skin. And she's beautiful, and strong, and kind, and he's just a man kneeling at her feet, grateful he had even one chance to hold her once, and if this ended here after what they shared tonight, he would be okay with it, honoured that he has at least _this_ to cherish for good.

The kiss deepens. Their lips part, giving in to the urge of their tongues seeking each other. Din finds himself rolling on top of Cara, between her spreading legs, with her hands tangled in his hair and the agonising softness of her inner thighs clutching his flanks.

“We need to stop this,” he mumbles, pulling back from her lips to brush an apologetic kiss on her cheek. His whole body is aching _not_ to stop, and he can feel how turned on she is, as well, but if they don't end this here, they'll never get out of this bunk by the end of the day, and they have a pending deadline to deliver this bounty.

“Okay,” sighs Cara, seductively dragging her lips along his collarbone. Din hisses and his eyes shut under a flare of pleasure when her tongue flickers around the sensitive spot above his pulse.

“ _Cara,”_ he warns – or, rather, _pleads._

She chuckles under her breath and finally the grip of her arms around him relents enough for him to pull back, and suddenly facing a mad mudhorn doesn't sound that much of an effort compared to the one he has to make to pull himself up from the irresistible cradle of Cara's body.

He somehow musters the strength to sit up and throw his legs over the side of the bunk, but once he's there, he can't seem to move. His fingers curl around the edge, and he stalls. The cold air crawls up his back and makes him shudder, rousing goosebumps all over his arms. The warmth and the comfort of the sheets and Cara's arms calls to him and, not without a hint of amusement, he wonders what his clan would think of him, now, defeated by the sensual allure of a woman's body.

He snorts to himself, and finally gets up, very aware of Cara's attention upon him as he retrieves his pants and tugs them up on his way to the galley.

“Looking good, Djarin,” calls Cara from behind him.

Din stops on the threshold to turn around for a moment. Cara is sprawled languidly on the pillow, the sheets thrown back, leaving her deliciously and shamelessly exposed. The slight bend of her legs shows off the muscles of her thighs and the curve of her calves; Din's look lingers on her belly button, then ventures north, to the perfect roundness of her breasts rising and falling to the slow rhythm of her breath. He doesn't know how he manages not to jump straight into bed and take her just like that, but he thinks he deserves a lot of credit for this.

“You're a horrible person, Dune,” he smirks, then turns away and leaves before that smug grin on her face destroys the very last shred of self-control left in him.

He checks the child, still fast asleep in his pram, then turns up the heating before proceeding to put on some caf. It takes it twice the usual time to put the kettle on: he keeps getting distracted by the memories from last night and the promises of how things are going to be from now on. There are plenty of chances he and Cara will screw up, several times, but they've been acting as a couple since way before realising their feelings, so maybe there isn't that much work to do.

There is the silliest grin plastered across his mouth while he starts gathering the food from the pantry. He must look like a real idiot from the outside.

Breakfast is almost ready and he's about to risk his sanity and go back to get Cara when he senses a presence behind him. He turns around and spots Cara across the room, wearing his sleeping shirt and nothing else. It's hardly long enough to be decent.

“Look at that,” she says to the child, curled in her arms, still half asleep. “Dad made us breakfast.”

The phrasing causes Din's chest to tighten, not in an unpleasant way. This is no different from many other mornings they've had together, but after last night, it _is_ different: the subtle smirk Cara is sending his way, how at ease and at home she seems in his clothes...

He notices a dark bruise in the crook of her neck and feels himself blush, remembering his lips sucking on the spot, making her moan and writhe under him... He can still feel the print her teeth left in his shoulder in return.

“We need to have sex more often, if this is it the result,” she says, observing the table with an impressed look.

Din arches his brows at her.

“ _Sex?”_

For a moment, he thinks he got it all wrong. _Sex_ isn't exactly the term he would have used to describe last night. It's too shallow and inaccurate, too... trivial. It was more than just sex, at least to him.

“What?” she teases, coming forward. “Do you prefer _make love?”_

The knowing smile that brightens up her face wipes away all fear.

“Fine,” she concedes playfully without waiting for his reply, “we need to _make love_ more often.”

Now Din is chuckling, too, glad there is still room for their unrelenting flirting, even now that they don't really need that any more to channel their feelings.

“I know you're soft beneath this sassy crust,” he retorts, “you can't hide it.”

“Maybe I don't _want_ to hide it,” she argues into his face. Her gaze drops to his mouth; Din grins. Cara admitting she's willing to be open and vulnerable with him does things to his heart.

He sees her head move, just imperceptibly, and before he knows he's pulling her into his arms and locking his lips upon hers, getting a low, muffled sigh in return as she pliantly melts into the kiss before returning it greedily.

Sandwiched between them, the child giggles in delight. Din can feel his little hands pawing at his and Cara's faces while they're still deep into the kiss, and he bursts out laughing.

Cara laughs, too, the sound of it merging with Din's as they pull back just enough to breathe, foreheads still leaning against each other. The kid is looking up at them, grinning so happily it's almost like he realises what is going on and he's been waiting for it as much as Din and Cara have.

“Looks like someone's happy for us,” says Din with a loving caress over the child's fuzzy head.

The child's hands are still on their cheeks and they laugh again when they feel him pull their faces back together.

“You need to stop that, kid,” Cara giggles, her eyes shining with mirth. “We don't need any encouragement.”

She turns her gaze up to Din and he kisses her forehead, then the kid's.

“Come on, you two, we have a busy schedule, today.”

He gestures to the table and Cara sits down with the kid on her lap. The shirt moves up her legs as she scoots to make room for Din, and a terrible suspicion sneaks up on him.

“Are you-” he starts asking, but Cara, following his look, puts on a mischievous smirk and shakes her head.

“Nuh-uh.”

Din screws his eyes shut, cursing all the gods in the universe for making this woman so attractive and so damn cheeky.

“You want me to choke on my breakfast, don't you?”

“Oh, Din, don't be ridiculous.” Cara grabs the pot of fresh caf and starts filling up her and Din's much in utter nonchalance. She puts two sugars in his and slides it over to him.

“If I wanted you to choke on your breakfast,” she says, “I'd tell you I'm wearing _your_ underwear.”

Din has just brought his mug to his lips; he starts coughing, caf spilling out of his nose and sputtering everywhere, much to Cara's and the kid's amusement.

He sets his mug down, wiping his face into a towel. His beard is dripping caf onto his meat, but he doesn't care. He casts a sideways glare to Cara and the child, who are still laughing beside him, and the glare quickly turns into a smile, then a helpless laugh.

Nothing is different from usual, yet everything is: he and Cara are sitting tight together, their naked legs touching, their bare feet brushing over one another as they fill up their plates and feed small bites to the kid.

Everything is absolutely normal, and yet everything is wonderfully new.

“I don't like how you two have teamed up against me,” he grumbles after lowering the soaked towel.

“Tell him it's not true, kid,” says Cara to the baby. She picks him up and holds him so that he's facing in Din's direction. “Come on,” she urges, rubbing a hand over his tummy, “tell Daddy how much we love him.”

Obediently, the child wiggles his stubby hands at Din, babbling adorable nonsense, and Din's heart swells in his chest, for this and for the soft way Cara is looking at him above the kid, her chin resting on top of his head as they both smile at him.

This thing he's feeling – this lightness, this foreign serenity... is this what happiness feels like?

Before he knows, he hears his voice ask, “You do?”

Cara's smile falters. It's like only now she's realising this might not be so easy for him to process. Because it isn't, and he's like frozen on the spot, his brain and his heart fighting for dominance in a battle where one is screaming _'It's too good to be real!'_ and the other screams back _'Don't be afraid to believe it!'._

“Din.” Cara's tone is unbearably gentle. She places a hand over his thigh and squeezes reassuringly, pushing a little closer. “Look at me,” she says.

Din obliges, fearing he will find pity in her eyes. He doesn't.

“I won't let you doubt this. _I won't.”_ She bends to lean her head against his, her hand still gripping his thigh as she whispers in his ear, “Okay?”

Din nods. A curl forms at the corners of his mouth.

The child crawls onto his lap, cooing quietly; he grabs Din's hand a puts it on top of Cara's over his leg, grinning in satisfaction when their fingers intertwine spontaneously.

“You're very proud of yourself, aren't you?” says Cara, and the kid responds with a giggle that does sound extremely proud.

Din's thumb strokes the back of Cara's hand as his other arm wraps around the baby.

“Hey,” he mutters with his heart pulsing in the back of his throat, “I love you too, you know?”

He smiles to himself, relaxing a little.

For his first time, it went rather smoothly.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is utterly pointless, but, hey, I can't tell my muse what she wants to write. I'll get back to the WIP I've already got in my drafts folder, now, I swear.
> 
> To whoever read this and liked this and every other story out there: your kudos are amazing, but consider making an author extremely happy with just a single line in a comment. It means the world to us, we read and cherish them all, even the ones left in older stories. Please, remember how little it takes to reward a writer for their hard work whenever you get to the end of a story and only press a kudos button. One line, three words, a string of emojis... everything is a joy and a blessing to receive. Remember that. <3


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